Vangilder v. Baker’s Empirical Analysis
435 F.3d 689 · 2006
Citation profile
12 federal appellate · 3 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently October 2023 · most notably 43 Cal. 4th 885 - Yount v. City of Sacramento (2008), Thore v. Howe (2006)
12 federal appellate · 3 district · 3 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Graham v. Connor · Heck v. Humphrey · Nelson v. Campbell Commissioner Alabama Department of Corrections et al. · McNair v. Coffey
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[I]t would imply that once a person resists law enforcement, he has invited the police to inflict any reaction or retribution they choose, while forfeiting the right to sue for damages. Put another way, police subduing a suspect could use as much force as they wantedand be shielded from accountability under civil lawas long as the prosecutor could get the plaintiff convicted on a charge of resisting.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“VanGilder does not collaterally attack his conviction, deny that he resisted [the officer’s] order to comply with the blood draw, or challenge the factual basis presented at his change of plea hearing. Rather, VanGilder claims that he suffered unnecessary injuries because [the officer’s] response to his resistance ... was not, under the law governing excessive use of force, objectively reasonable.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. McCann v. Neilsen“Heck does not automatically bar a § 1983 claim simply because the processes of the criminal justice system did not end up in the plaintiffs favor. A plaintiff need not prove that any conviction stemming from an incident with the police has been invalidated, only a conviction that could not be reconciled with the claims of his civil action.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.